Armor-Wearing Murderer Captured On Camera On The Fourth Of July

St. Louis Metropolitan Police are looking for two suspects in a double-murder yesterday that has some disturbing details not mentioned by police.

First, here’s the description of the shooting as related by the Post-Dispatch.

Video shows the gunmen who opened fire with rifles outside a St. Louis market Monday, killing two people and injuring a third.

Video released by police Tuesday shows the victims pull up in a car at Moma Minnie’s convenience store at Page Boulevard and Pendleton Avenue. Two of the victims get out to go in the store, according to police.

Another car pulls up, and two men with rifles get out and begin shooting.

Police say Samuel Jackson, 31, and Jamie Conner, 21, were killed in the shooting just before noon Monday. They lived nearby in the 4200 block of West Page Boulevard.

Investigators found at least 60 shell casings from the rifles, according to St. Louis police Major John Hayden.

A woman nearby said the shooting sounded like fireworks but just kept going.

A third victim, a 20-year-old man, ran into the store. He is in critical and unstable condition. Police say there was a fourth victim who ran from the scene. Police aren’t sure if that person was injured.

Now here’s the video provided by the St. Louis Metro PD.

Did anything jump out at you about the video?

I saw several things that I think were noteworthy.

Just as soon as the victims turned and parked their light-colored Buick, the suspects come tearing in from the opposite direction, make the turn, and are on them in a flash. There’s always chance that rivals just happened to meet up at the same place at the same time, but I think it’s far more likely that they had advanced knowledge of where the four men in the Buick were going to be. It seems likely that this was a pre-planned ambush.

Then we have several interesting things that stand out about Suspect 1.

Suspect 1 is carrying an AR-15 pattern rifle with a dual-drum 100-round magazine (probably a Beta-Mag or the KCI knock-off) and has no rear sight. That’s moderately interesting for the simple reason that rifles are very rarely used in crimes, but that’s not the really interesting thing.

What’s interesting is that Suspect 1 appears to be wearing soft body armor under his shirt.

You can see what appears to be the top of the armor panel running horizontally across his shoulders, the downward taper of the armor, and the hint of an outline of the shoulder straps going over his shoulder under his dark-colored shirt. It’s exactly the armor profile we see on this uniformed officer, below.

The Post-Dispatch then goes on to give use the briefest flash of the second suspect.

They claim that he is armed with a rifle, but if so, it’s very clear that it doesn’t have a stock or a rifle-length barrel, and doesn’t appear to have a noticeable magazine where you would expect it. Could this merely be the fact that we’re looking at poor-quality video? Quite possibly. The suspect’s hand placement and overall weapon envelope is consistent with something along the lines of a AKM-patterned pistol… or it would be if the distinctive shape of an AK magazine was present, and I just can’t see it in the video. The short overall length of the weapon and his hand placement would also be consistent with a short-barrel shotgun like you might use in breaching operations.

It’s incredibly rare to catch criminals in the act, much less evidence suggesting that there was an ambush and that at least one of the suspects was wearing soft body armor.

We’re hoping that someone in the St. Louis area will be able to identify these two men and take them off the street quickly.

Anyone who may know the identities of those involved is encouraged to call 1-866-371-8477.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
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